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Anybody use Slingbox?

I'd be interested in hearing what your experiences were/are with Slingbox, if you've ever had one/used one. If so, what was your upload speed limit with your ISP? How did you feel about picture quality and how consistent/smooth was the stream to your device/PC?

Re: Anybody use Slingbox?

I loved it when I lived in Florida because I could watch Redskins games, but I had a dedicated TV that no one else would mess with. This was important because if you change the channel on the dedicated TV the slingbox will get overridden.

It is a nice service, and it allowed me to watch NFL games while in college. That said, the stream times were aggrevating as hell, and at times I felt like I was dealing with a 56K connection.

I did try slingbox a while back (maybe 2 months ago) just to see how it was, and they got away from using the application and now you log into slingbox.com and the app is built into the site. Which I would have LOVED back then as if you did not have the application on your laptop you couldnt use it. Also, if your home network changes the password, ip address, ANYTHING, you basically had to reconfigure the whole slingbox application (which used to drive me nuts)

I did stream one show from my laptop to my TV, but the quality was average at best.

Re: Anybody use Slingbox?

It wouldn't record anything, but what it does is piggyback on your TV box and streams that audio/video to the Internet where you can then watch your TV from a phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop. I think it also is setup to allow you to send signals back to your TV box to change the channel, go through menus, that kind of thing.

Re: Anybody use Slingbox?

It wouldn't record anything, but what it does is piggyback on your TV box and streams that audio/video to the Internet where you can then watch your TV from a phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop. I think it also is setup to allow you to send signals back to your TV box to change the channel, go through menus, that kind of thing.

Correct.

I know you said you wouldnt use it, but you can also use the remote on your screen to access/control your DVR

Re: Anybody use Slingbox?

When my brother had to work overseas for a month, he bought a slingbox and connected it to his cable box at home and connected to it via his Laptop to watch American TV and the Superbowl.

My Uncle has a slingbox at his home in Toronto and was able to connect to it via his IPhone via his 3G or WiFi connection. Although I am guessing that there was some lag between what was "live" and what was shown on the screen...I was able to watch and change channels on his TV in Toronto ( keeping in mind that I am in the SF Bay Area ) on his IPhone via a WiFi and 3G connection.

The quality of the video...like everything else...is based off of your connection. I'd imagine that it would be no different than watching NBA Gametime on your IPhone...the better the connection...the better the quality of the video. Either way...it's well worth it.

The Following User Says Thank You to vapacersfan For This Useful Post:

Re: Anybody use Slingbox?

I've had a slingbox for several years. I'm a fan. I've used it with my home pc/macbook/droidx-3g/razr-4g/kindle fire/ and it's been solid on all platforms. Very handy keeping up with Pacers games when traveling, but also around the house on laptop or Kindle Fire. Quality can come and go depending on connection quality, but usually its very good.

Re: Anybody use Slingbox?

I ended up going the budget route and bought the Vulkano Flow. It's essentially the game thing, but while the Flow also lets you stream HD channels, it doesn't send them to devices at that higher resolution; it gets down converted to 480. I believe if I had paid for the HD Slingbox, it would keep the resolution up at 720/1080. As someone who definitely appreciates picture quality, I have some regret in that sense, but the flip side is this: Even with the lower picture quality, I would describe it as more than acceptable; aka good not great, and I paid $105 for this instead of $300 or so for an HD slingbox, and $13 for the app the works on my iPhone and my iPad (one app works on both), whereas with Slingbox I'd have to pay $60 ($30 for iPhone, then separate $30 for iPad).

So I got what I paid for, I'm satisfied, but as a fan of high quality it will nag at me that I didn't spring for the Slingbox with HD support. Still, I got great bang for my buck, and again while I wish I could have the HD picture quality, this will certainly do.

Oh, and I should mention that one thing I like about the Flow versus Slingbox is that with Flow you don't need an ethernet cable all the time (though you will probably need it to initially setup the device); it supports 801.11n WiFi, whereas Slingbox is ethernet only. My router is in a different room from my TV, so this was a nice feature for me. I'd rather not have to string cable like that if I don't have to.

So my assumption is Slingbox is the superior product (though I've read some complaining that it dies on some customers after X months or a year-ish), but either way you get what you pay for and neither is a bad product.

On my budget, it was a reasonable choice. If I had more money to burn, I'd go with Slingbox HD and just deal with the annoyance of stringing cable.